Giants 8, Rockies 1: Lincecum had a no hitter into the seventh inning. As I was watching it in the den, my wife walked in. She loves Tim Lincecum, so I said “hey, your boyfriend has a no-hitter going in the seventh.” She said “Is that good?” I’ve been married to this woman for almost 16 years and we’ve been together for over 20 and absolutely zero baseball knowledge has rubbed off on her. There’s an aggressive, tenacious amount of ignorance there, bordering on the hostile. Maybe it’s for the best. If she was into baseball, she probably would try to do something about her Tim Lincecum fixation. Timmy struck out 10 in seven and two-thirds.

Indians 7, Royals 3: A tight one in regulation between the top two teams in the AL Central. Though they would pile more runs on in the 10th, Shelley Duncan‘s RBI double that inning ended up being the game-winner. So two of the Calcaterra ladies had reason to be happy last night, even though they were both oblivious of it. My wife because of her active ignorance of her boyfriend’s eventually spoiled accomplishment, my daughter because her minor league baseball crush got his hit after her 8:30 PM bedtime.

Dodgers 4, Braves: 2: I couldn’t watch all of this one because of the time difference, but I switched to it as soon as Lincecum’s no-hitter was broken up. Thanks to MLB.tv I had my choice of announcers. Do I watch my favorite team’s crew, or do I watch the bad guys’ crew? The former is Chip Caray. The latter is Vin Scully. Who do you think I watched? In the top of the second inning Scully said the following, and this is an exact quote: “Dan Uggla — U-G-G-L-A. It is a Swedish name, and it means owl.” You can never go wrong with Scully.

Brewers 6, Phillies 3: John Axford blew the save by allowing a pinch-hit RBI single to Pete Orr, and they played on deadlocked until the 12th. That’s when Kyle Kendrick came in for Philly. While he pitched the entire 12th inning, Kendrick didn’t retire anyone who didn’t willingly give themselves up. Here’s how the inning went: walk, attempted sacrifice/Kendrick throwing error, sacrifice, HBP, run-scoring wild pitch, intentional walk, RBI sacrifice, intentional walk, RBI single, but the third out on an outfield assist. Oy.

Twins 5, Orioles 3: Eight straight losses for Baltimore. Drew Butera — who else? — swings the big stick for the Twins, going 2 for 3 with a double and three RBI. Matt Capps allowed a homer in the ninth but got the save anyway. Which is an improvement.

Pirates 9, Reds 3: Travis Wood takes a cue from Edinson Volquez and allows three runs in the first inning and the Reds never really recovered. Wood gave up six runs on eight hits in all. No home runs for Pittsburgh, but every Pirate starter except the pitcher got a hit, and most of them had two hits. Only bright spot for Cincy: Aroldis Chapman pitched a scoreless ninth, hitting triple digits on the radar gun multiple times. The ballpark radar gun registered 106 once, but that was obviously hot. But even if it was, what, four or five miles per hour over, it ain’t like Chapman was throwing meatballs.

Cubs 1, Padres 0: It was 34 degrees at the time of the first pitch, so the fact that this was a 0-0 game through nine innings is kind of understandable. Carlos Zambrano shut out the Padres on three hits while striking out eight ten during his time in the game. Tim Stauffer did the same on four hits over seven. Cubbies win it when Tyler Colvin doubles in Geovany Soto in the bottom of the 10th.

Rangers 7, Angels 1: C.J. Wilson strikes out nine in seven innings and Ervin Santana shows us that there’s a long ways down from Mt. HarenWeaver to the valley in which the rest of the Angels rotation resides (4 IP, 10 H, 6 ER).

Tigers 8, Mariners 3: Detroit comes from behind when they put up a 6-spot in the seventh inning. Or, as Eric Wedge put it after the game, “that seventh inning got ugly there.” A win, but a costly one for Detroit, as they lose Victor Martinez to a groin injury in the second.

Craig, if thats not grounds for irreconcilable differences, I don’t know what is. I’m not a lawyer by any means, and I never even played one on TV. She must’ve made you a pretty happy man to put up with that for 20 years! My wife came with some baseball knowledge after living in Boston behind Fenway for 2.5 years… but I had to teach her a little football, or else it would’ve been really long winters. And I gotta say, she tries. If she walks into the room during the game, she’ll still ask me, “did they make a down?” I am kidding about your wife of course, before someone jumps on here and takes it seriously… you never know these days…

My wife came with Cricket knowledge, her father having served on the board of directors of Lords. She talks funny, too. However, she also came with a love of disco, which appeals to me quite a bit less than the cacaphony of all the male Danton’s Toads (Bufo decadantus) in our backyard pond in the spring. At least disco doesn’t keep me awake. In any event if I had tried to educate my lovely English flower about baseball, she would have insisted on playing more disco or even…>gul< – taking me to one. No thanks. We compromised on Cricket, though. I agreed to be educated and she agreed not to insist on my taking her to backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforthball games when we're in London. Fair enough.

I hate football too. Not United states Football. Real Football is terribly boring. How do those people get so damned riled up over it? 1 goal for an entire game in many cases. And the people riot….. WTH?

Futbol is like a religion just about everywhere but here in the States (and possibly Canadia, where they take a rock and slide it on ice that they sweep up in front of it for some reason). I like soccer. It happens to be my second favorite spectator sport.

cleverbob - Apr 19, 2011 at 8:05 AM

WTF was with Kyle Kendrick? They could have thrown in a Single A pitcher and he probably would have faired just as well.

Kyle Kendrick is the bane of my existence. I hate him so much. I have hated him for the past 3 years. He is NOT a big league pitcher. Why Cholly keeps him around is beyond me. Send his ass to Reading and bring up Vance Worley. At least with Worley you aren’t positive how he’ll be yet. And lets be honest, can he possibly be worse than Kendrick was last night?

Rag on Kendrick instead of talking about how the Brewers pitcher saved the day in the 8th inning by taking a Polanco liner off his back only to have Yuniesky make a diving catch and turned two on what would have been a hit that scored the game’s winning run??

Well, there’s a good side to last night’s loss. Blanton gave up 2 runs in 7 innings. Jose looked good. Now I’m tired from staying up. Oh well, The boy and I are going to the park to watch Roy pitch tonight. Forecast, Cloudy with a chance of strike outs.

Blanton gave up 2 runs in 7 innings to a team that had Mark Kotsay, Carlos Gomez and Yuniesky Betancourt as 1/3 of its lineup. Not sure pitching results can be taken to mean a whole heck of a lot from this one.

Fielder and Braun are chopped liver? LOL! Trust me, it’s a nice improvement for Blanton from what he’s done so far this season. It shows he’s not changed much and we should see the Joe Blanton we like pretty soon.

wurst2first - Apr 19, 2011 at 12:04 PM

Haha, no, Fielder and Braun aren’t chopped liver and neither are Rickie Weeks or (to a much, much lesser extent) Casey McGehee and Jonathan Lucroy. But having those three guys in the lineup is just a vacuum of suck for the Brewers right now.

Good on Blanton for having a good start, maybe Randy Wolf can pull another rabbit out of his hat tonight (right? maybe?!?).

I wonder if anyone will whip out their old wolfpack gear for the game?? Wolfy is still loved by most Philly fans. A round of applause for sure when he’s announced. This is going to be a cool game to be at.

Phans weren’t too enthralled when he showed up here with the Dodgers in the NLCS—ya know, after he said he’d be cheered when he pitched here. The stands showered him with boos. Now, whether those boos were hubris-based or not is the question.

Colvin doubled in Geovany Soto who scored from FIRST BASE. It was essentially a “It’s freezing freaking cold and we’re sending anyone who comes near third” type of play. Honestly, I watched the game, and I swear to you the players were like little leaguers being told to “Hustle up” to their positions – they ran quite quickly on and off the field. Still – fun game overall.

For all the HBT commenters who posited the question of whether the Phillies should have kept Werth over signing Cliff Lee, last night should have shown why EVERYONE who watched the Phillies daily picked Lee. Not only because we love Lee. Not because we don’t like Werth(we do…we really, really do). No, it is because WE F’ING HATE HATE HATE HATE Kyle Kendrick. And he made 33 FREAKING STARTS last year. 33!!!!!!!!

He is good for one purpose, and one purpose alone…if the Phillies are trailing 6-0 in the 3rd inning, he can throw 3 or 4 great innings and trick Uncle Cholly into thinking he is a good pitcher. He’s not. He has always sucked. He sucks now. And he always will suck. Amen.

Right, since they have just hit a rough patch over the last few games. Right…you were right on top of all that. Sure thing.

Chris Fiorentino - Apr 19, 2011 at 3:37 PM

I don’t even know what the hell you are talking about and how this is a response to my post…I wasn’t talking about the bullpen, I was talking about how much I hate Kyle Kendrick. Keeping Werth would not have helped the bullpen. I guess if Kendrick wasn’t pulling down the bullpen and instead was pulling down the starting staff, that would have helped the bullpen. So maybe that was what you meant?

seeingwhatsticks - Apr 19, 2011 at 4:03 PM

No, my points about Lee have always been two-fold:

1. He will be an absolute Zito-esque anchor before that contract is over, and it will probably hasten the Phillies slide from contenders to pretenders.

2. Starting pitching wasn’t the weakness last year, and it wasn’t the reason they lost to the Giants. The bullpen was a much bigger issue (see Roy Oswalt entering a game as a reliever in the NLCS). I’ve said before and I will continue to say that the Phillies would have made themselves a better team by spreading the Lee money out over a couple of positions, notably a replacement for Werth, some depth around the infield in case 2 guys with extensive injury histories (Utley and Rollins) somehow can’t stay healthy, and at least 1 plus reliever (preferably 2-3).

I still stand by both of those points. Adding Lee might mean more regular season wins than the moves to add more depth but I don’t think adding Lee and losing Werth makes them a better postseason team.

Chris Fiorentino - Apr 19, 2011 at 4:10 PM

“I’ve said before and I will continue to say that the Phillies would have made themselves a better team by spreading the Lee money out over a couple of positions, notably a replacement for Werth, some depth around the infield in case 2 guys with extensive injury histories (Utley and Rollins) somehow can’t stay healthy, and at least 1 plus reliever (preferably 2-3). ”

Would you care to name the following players that the Phillies should have signed for the $11 million they are paying Cliff Lee this year and the $21.5 million they are paying him next year…

A replacement for Werth(they have Francisco and Brown is on the way)
Infield Depth(They have Vladez who is fine, and Orr has been pretty solid)
Preferably 2 or 3 plus bullpen arms(I would have liked Soriano, but not in the place of Lee)

Instead of laying out the foundation of what you would have done, enlighten me on who exactly you would have signed, and for how much and how long, in the place of Lee. because as far as I can remember, there wasn’t all that much out there.

seeingwhatsticks - Apr 19, 2011 at 4:16 PM

For one thing adding Beltre would have been less money, improved the defense, added a RH bat to replace Werth, and moved Polanco into a super-sub type of role where he could cover for Utley. There were a number of fringe starters available for cheap that could have been an improvement over Kendrick (Freddy Garcia has done well in NY thus far), and bullpen arms don’t have to be expensive to be quality. Plus, even if there are no good FA available the Phillies have some decent prospects in the lower levels that might have been good trade bait if you don’t like Beltre.

Chris Fiorentino - Apr 19, 2011 at 4:25 PM

They weren’t going to put out all that money for Beltre when they are still planning for when Utley will come back. Beltre is a dog and there’s no way in hell I would have been happy with the Phillies giving him $80 million for the next 5 years. No way. Valdez/Orr is fine until Utley comes back. Francisco/Brown are OK in place of Werth…at least for the money. But nothing in the world will convince me that Cliff Lee in place of Kyle Kendrick is anything short of spectacular.

seeingwhatsticks - Apr 19, 2011 at 4:58 PM

So Beltre, who fills more needs, at 5 years $80 million is a bad deal compared to Cliff Lee, who is sort of redundant, at 5 years $120 million? Please explain that logic.

Old Gator - Apr 19, 2011 at 12:29 PM

I’m delighted to discover that Uggla means Owl. He even looks like one – thoroughly plucked, of course. But is there a major leaguer whose name translates into Da Duva?

The real Boston story isn’t Dice-K, it’s Lowrie. He now has a bit over 600 PAs in the majors, and he’s hit .268/.348/.445 with 15 HRs and above-average defense at shortstop, which is immensely valuable. What’s more, he’s been way better than even that since he came up partway through last year: .310/.396/.543.

Of course, he’s probably not as good as he’s been in his 230 2010-2011 PAs, partly because it’s a small sample and partly because he’s gotten to face a lot of lefties. But he looks like somewhere between a 3-win and 5-win player, which is fantastic, and at an extremely shallow position (especially in the AL).

I know that the venerable Vin Scully is supposed to be being criticisized, his voice is like baseball butter. And I really do like him, I just wish he’d stick to the play by play part of his job. My issue is that he never lets the game get in the way of all of his stories and tidbits and quotes! It’s like he’s afraid of dead air.

He’s certainly got a gift for describing the players, even when he can’t keep track of how big some of them are or just what their tattoos are of. We’ve got a local DJ that does a great Vin Scully but he does it in a “I’d like to see this player naked” kind of way. I nearly crashed my car when i first heard that routine; thought Vin had finally lost his marbles and here it was just the DJ making fun of baseball announcers in general. I’ve never laughed so hard while driving…

Scully was great last calling Sand’s 1st at bat, hit, RBI and put out.

I know that the venerable Vin Scully is supposed to be above being criticized, his voice is like baseball butter. And I really do like him, I just wish he’d stick to the play by play part of his job. My issue is that he never lets the GAME get in the way of all of his stories and tidbits and quotes! It’s like he’s afraid of dead air.